Downtown $106M plan may die tonight

MILLBURN -- Tonight's Township Committee meeting could signal the beginning of the end to the township's $106 million downtown redevelopment proposal.

"We need to reject this plan. Period," said Mayor Sandy Haimoff leading up to the meeting. "We need to deal with this plan before we can do anything else."

The Township Committee is scheduled to meet tonight at Town Hall because municipal offices were closed Tuesday for Veterans Day. Members of the governing body were expected to discuss results of the series of public hearings held over the past two months, and then direct Township Attorney Kit Falcon to draft a resolution sealing the fate of the downtown redevelopment plan. The resolution would then come up for a vote at the Dec. 2 Township Committee session.

The plan prepared by consultants Wallace, Roberts and Todd (WRT), calls for sweeping changes within the 13-acre Downtown Redevelopment Area, including a new Town Hall, more than 1,000 new and replacement parking spaces, three new parking structures, and the construction of 129 new market rate housing units, 47 affordable housing units, and 48,730 additional square feet of retail space.

Township Committee member Jim Suell last week proposed that the WRT plan be scrapped and that, instead, officials consider a scaled-down proposal that would be more financially feasible.

In addition, the Downtown Millburn Development Alliance has come up with several possible plans that would address parking, retail and housing on a much smaller scale. But Mayor Haimoff said the current plan should be formally rejected by resolution before officials start talking about any new plans. To send the current plan back to the Planning Board and its consultants for revisions would be cost prohibitive, she said.

"I am absolutely not in favor of that. I think the Township Committee has to assume responsibility at this point and determine what it is we want," the mayor said.
"I really believe that something needs to be done," the mayor said, adding that the township needs a parking deck and better traffic flow. "We have to figure out what needs to be done and we have to go ahead and do it," the mayor said.

Mayor Haimoff said she will suggest the Township Committee get attorney and redevelopment expert Joseph Maraziti back in December to discuss options with members of the governing body.

"I hope to be able to move these things ahead quickly and not get bogged down," Mayor Haimoff said, adding that the public redevelopment meetings were "wonderful."
"They really gave us a sense of what the community wanted," she said.